Ex-Bank Executive In Gay Bias Claim Denies Harassing Colleague

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM - Peter Lewis, an ex-HSBC Holdings Plc executive bringing a 5 million-pound ($8.7 million) gay bias claim against the bank, denied allegations he harassed a male colleague by committing a private sexual act in a gym shower cubicle.
Lewis, HSBC's former global head of equities trading, was dismissed after a co-worker complained that he had exhibited "unwanted behavior of a non-verbal sexual nature'' and "behaved inappropriately both before and after doing so'' in an adjacent shower stall in November 2004, according to documents submitted to an east London employment tribunal.
That alleged incident never occurred, Lewis told the tribunal. He said he had received "threatening and abusive'' phone calls from an HSBC employee, some using a derogatory term for a homosexual, a month after starting work. The executive, who is openly gay and who says he has been in a monogamous partnership for 10 years, claims HSBC would never have believed the allegations against him if he had been a heterosexual male.
"I was dismissed from the firm for reasons and beliefs which were not based on facts or evidences but for `preferences' which resulted from innuendo, assumption, false stereotype and homophobia,'' Lewis says in documents submitted to the court.
Record Claim
Lewis's claim is the largest ever of its kind brought to a tribunal in the U.K. and the first from a high-profile financial professional. The case is likely to turn on whether HSBC responded to the complaint against the former executive in the same way that it would have dealt with a complaint brought by a straight employee, employment law experts said.
"Employers need to take appropriate steps to investigate all allegations of harassment and to conduct those investigations fairly,'' said Mark Hunt, head of employment at Reed Smith. "Whether an employer has done this is the key issue to be determined in cases such as this.''
HSBC denies wrongdoing and says that it conducted a through investigation of Lewis's conduct before he was dismissed.
Regulations banning discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation came into force in Britain in December 2003, after the government implemented a fair employment directive from the European Union.
Other financial professionals have settled their cases out of court, including Sid Saeed, a former Deutsche Bank AG vice president who claimed to have suffered severe health problems as a result of racial and homophobic abuse from colleagues.
from Bloomberg